I believe they alienated the crowd that made them successful in the first place about 2 months prior to launch, when they basically tore up their manifesto and implemented that horrid cash shop, along with many gameplay changes that increased the grind. The game is now being tuned more and more to force you to the cash shop. Auction house manipulations, forced grind, money sinks, etc. Many of us complained about that when it was announced and we have been proven correct unfortunately...

Ok, I can see Draks argument and despite disagreeing with him know exactly what he's talking about, I just have absolutely no idea what you're rambling about, they never said anything about not having a cash shop or zero grind in thei manifesto...

Originally Posted by draykorinee

Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.

Here's 2 meaningful arguments:
1) It funnels players to a single dungeon in the already central hub city, further discouraging any kind of diversification of dungeons players run.
2) By adding a "level" feature you significantly fracture your playerbase, which is made even more awesome by the lack of a funcitonal LFG tool.

An individual being blind to the consequences or not being able to see past the end of their nose doesn't make something less meaningful.

Coulda left off that last part and still made your point.
I don't think it's really as funneling, the waypoint system makes that moot. There IS a need for some sort of LFG system in game, but I still see plenty of "lfg for Blah lala dungeon" rather than all fractals.

The level system IS divisive, but I think that may be part of the point. The folks grinding out the higher levels who don't want to, er "lower themselves" to run other levels, are the people that thrive on that competitiveness aspect anyway. Plenty of folks run it just to run it and it won't matter, if that makes sense.

Almost certainly the latter because people like to be dramatic, but it is still a major shift in game design.

I think that's my point, we know it's a shift, but we don't know how major it is. If you consider it more of an "errata" than an "upgrade" ("it should have been in at launch, but we messed up"), then it isn't so much of a big deal, maybe.
Who knows right now though.

I fully agree on the emotions thing, but it's how most people make their opinions known. But that's not what I'm doing, I'm pointing out the shifts we've seen from ANet over the years, yet the people who are doing exactly what you're talking about on the other end of the spectrum: "*I* love this game, so your argument is invalid!" are the ones stifling any kind of useful discourse.

It's both sides, most of these threads are circular arguments that will never go anywhere. It could be compared to politics, but no real point to it.

---------- Post added 2012-12-11 at 07:37 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Drakhar

Couldn't be more contrary to the truth. They decided to try to retain the retarded "lulz WoW is the only MMO there is and every other MMO must be exactly like it or else it's bad herpaderpaderp" crowd by catering to them on yet another issue. Aaaannnd in turn they continue to succeed in their quest to alienate the group of people that made them successful in the first place.

I'll be nice and call them "competitive folks" rather than your way, but yeah. Folks "needed" some challenge mode stuff so they could beat their heads against things.

What irks me about it, was that I thought GW2 had the perfect model for dealing with the "game of the month" club. Everyone that hopped into GW2, raced to 80, then left because there were no raids... that's like the best part of the B2P model. You have their money and don't pay server time! Meanwhile, folks like me can wander around doing stuff forever. Oh well.

---------- Post added 2012-12-11 at 07:41 PM ----------

Originally Posted by gainesvilleg

I believe they alienated the crowd that made them successful in the first place about 2 months prior to launch, when they basically tore up their manifesto and implemented that horrid cash shop, along with many gameplay changes that increased the grind.

It's one of the fundamental things with GW2 for me. There's "the grind" if you're you're trying to reach a goal and must complete X pointless activities before you can reach it. GW2, by contrast, IS the pointless activities, that's the entire game. They built a world to adventure in and are making updates to it, that's what they promised (if not up to the same standards as some of their promises) and that's what they delivered, so I'm really not sure what folks expected or why those expectations should matter.

My opinion? ANet really needs to lay off the PR and stop with the "holier-than-thou" stance. If January and February actually add essentially a new continent and multitudes of dungeons or stuff like that, THEN they can go around saying "we're adding expansion's worth of content in two months," but don't say that BEFORE you deliver. And, they just need to stop with the "the way we do things is better than how any other company does things" stance, it's a bit preachy and annoying.

At the same time, you NEVER take devs at their words in things like manifestos and the like. I was crazy excited for GW2, the Manifesto hyped me up but I easily could filter out obvious buzz-words. Of course they're going to try and sell their game and hype it up and make it sound awesome, EVERYONE does it. I've been a Rift subscriber since day 1, played since Beta, love Trion to death, and even in Rift trailers they have buzzwords like "dynamic" and such that you filter out. ANet is NOT THE ONLY COMPANY to hype their game up and liberally use buzzwords, EVERYONE DOES IT. ANet's just taken it a bit too far with their continued hype and buzzword usage.

Ascended gear is NOT THE SAME "gear progression" system as WoW's system or Rift's system. WoW and Rift GATE content based on gear level and DO IT CONTINUALLY. First get to level 90. Want to do Heroic 5mans? Do normal 5mans, get gear, pass the gear check. Want to do raids? Do Heroic 5mans, do dailies to get valor, do LFR, all to get gear to do Mogu'shan Vaults, then get gear there to do Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring. Want to do Tier 15 raids? Get gear from Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring. Want to do Tier 16 raids? Get gear from Tier 15 raids. All this in the span of 2 years-ish.

Or Rift: First get to level 50. Want to do Expert 5mans? Do Normal 5mans. Want to do Greenscale's Blight and River of Souls? Get gear from Expert 5mans. Want to raid Hammerknell? Get gear from Greenscale's Blight and River of Souls. Want to do Infernal Dawn? Get gear from Hammerknell.

Ascended is NOT that type of gear progression. They stated the Ascended "tier" would be rolled out over a year or so. The ONLY way that Ascended gear becomes the treadmill like WoW/Rift is if they start gating content to require Ascended gear THEN KEEP DOING THAT. It's ONE STEP, and one stop is NOT a treadmill.

Actually, Johanson said at that rate, they'll have an expansion worth of content after 4 or 5 months (April or May).

Well, if they keep outdoing what they just put out a month ago it's kinda true... and there's no doubt in my mind that if they are literally putting out expansions worth of content for free tons of people will buy it just for the shear amount of stuff to do, and the whole "I'm getting all this for free, who cares if i'm not in love with the game." approach a lot of people i know have...

@Smartazjb0y, yeah pretty much everything you said...

Originally Posted by draykorinee

Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.